Governor Newsom’s budget calls for fast-track of critical water infrastructure project

A project Californians depend on

No piece of infrastructure is more fundamental to California’s water supply and economic success than the State Water Project. It captures, moves, and stores water used by 27 million people and 750,000 acres of farmland. If the service area of the State Water Project were its own country, its economy would rank eighth largest in the world, generating $2.3 trillion in goods and services annually.  

In other words, California depends upon State Water Project deliveries. Abandoning or neglecting investments in this vital water system would put extraordinary financial pressure on ratepayers, including nearly 8 million people living in disadvantaged communities, to replace this water with more expensive, less reliable options.

Preparing California’s water infrastructure 

Over the last few decades, the California climate has warmed, with the effects felt strongly in water resources. The state has already experienced a marked increase in the variability of precipitation, with wild swings from drought to flood. 

Most major water systems — including the State Water Project  — were built for a more predictable bygone pattern of precipitation and are not equipped for the stronger storms, deeper droughts, and abrupt swings driven by climate change. The system simply cannot capture the type of big flows now becoming more common, and that must change.

Without action, the ability of the State Water Project to reliably deliver water to homes, farms and businesses will decline.  

Protecting California’s water supply 

California is expected to lose 10% of its water supply due to hotter and drier conditions, threatening the water supply for millions of Californians — and the reliability of the State Water Project could be reduced as much as 23 percent.  Extreme weather whiplash will result in more intense swings between droughts and floods – California’s 60-year-old water infrastructure is not built for these climate impacts. 

The Delta Conveyance Project will help offset and recover these future climate-driven water losses, and yet, it has been plagued by delays and red tape. 

The Delta Conveyance Project would expand the state’s ability to improve water supply reliability, while also maintaining fishery and water quality protections. During atmospheric rivers last year, the Delta Conveyance Project could have captured enough water for 9.8 million people’s yearly usage.

Removing unnecessary red tape

Governor Newsom first announced his commitment to the project during his first State of the State, modernizing the previous administration’s plans to address seismic and reliability issues and ensure that this critical piece of infrastructure could be built quickly and without delay. The Governor has advanced efforts to move the DCP forward, including certifying a final environmental impact report in December 2023 and securing financial support from water agencies throughout the state serving a majority of Californians. And while the project has received some necessary permits, its path forward is burdened by complicated regulatory frameworks and bureaucratic delays. Today, the Governor is proposing to streamline and strengthen the project’s path forward, to protect the state’s water supply for future generations.

The importance of protecting the reliability of the State Water Project is too great to allow the Delta Conveyance Project to be mired by unnecessary and extensive delays.  

The Governor’s proposal would streamline the project by:

• Simplifying permitting. The proposal would simplify permitting for the project by eliminating certain deadlines from existing State Water Project water rights permits — recognizing that the State Water Project should continue serving Californians’ water needs indefinitely. The proposal would also strengthen enforcement of the Water Board’s existing rules for permit protests.
• Confirming funding authority. The proposal confirms that the Department of Water Resources has the authority to issue bonds for the cost of the DCP, to be repaid by participating public water agencies.
• Preventing unnecessary litigation delays. The proposal narrows and streamlines judicial review of future challenges to the Delta Conveyance Project, building on models that have served other large public works projects. 
• Supporting construction. The proposal streamlines the authority to acquire land, supporting ultimate construction of the Delta Conveyance Project.

Building water infrastructure is a key part of the Governor’s build more, faster agenda delivering infrastructure upgrades and thousands of jobs across the state.